Lifesavers

Using some lines from this story I wrote, I decided to make an accordion book from a box of Cheerios. 

I posted the original story on the side of the box and an accordion containing words pours from the mouth of the box. This represents the way a box of Cheerios is poured into a bowl. Like this:

When I was trimming the words for each panel, they got mixed up into a pile. I was really annoyed by this at first. But then I thought about this boy and his "disease" that's noted in the story. I put disease in quotes because the boy does not have a disease. This is what his mother calls it because she doesn't know how else to label it. On the outside, he's a normal, good and wholesome, like the box of Cheerios. But on the inside, things are mixed up. I placed the words out of order to represent his inner emotions. The words follow a pattern on the accordion.

But at one place, they are different and double up.

This represents the boy's gene mutation on the inside of his body. This is where his "disease" stems from.

There is only one lifesaver on a strand of Cheerios.

It seems that the one thing that's different about this boy might be the one thing that's saving him from being just like everybody else, another box of Cheerios, another little boy. 

Complications: With any book, there are complications in the creation. I intended to have these words pour out of the box at once - like cereal. But upon further investigation, I realized that most people read from top to bottom. I had my words coming from the bottom to the top. With the entire strand unraveled, they would have to read backward if reading top to bottom. I purposely taped the top shut so readers had to pull the words out one at a time. I justify this by saying that like cereal, you don't know what you're going to get.

Overall: The idea behind this assignment was to use different materials while still using one of the forms we learned in class. The accordion book is, to my knowledge, one of the most basic styles. I liked using food and having a literal representation in book form. I also like the way this book evolved over the course of my creation. This is not entirely what I imagined at first, but I am happy with the results.